As for the burlesques themselves, they were nothing, the performers personally everything. M. Offenbach had opened Lemprière's Dictionary to the authors with “La Belle Hélène,” and there, was commonly a flimsy raveling of parodied myth, that held together the different dances and songs, though sometimes it was a novel or an opera burlesqued; but there was always a song and always a dance for each lady, song and dance being equally slangy, and depending for their effect mainly upon the natural or simulated personal charms of the performer. It was also an indispensable condition of the burlesque's success, that the characters should be reversed in their representation,--that the men's _rôles_ should be played by women, and that at least one female part should be done by a man. It must be owned that the fun all came from this character, the ladies being too much occupied with the more serious business of bewitching us with their pretty figures to be very amusing; whereas this wholesome man and brother, with his blonde wig, his _panier_, his dainty feminine simperings and languishings, his falsetto tones, and his general air of extreme fashion, was always exceedingly droll. He was the saving grace of these stupid plays; and I cannot help thinking that the _cancan_, as danced, in “Ivanhoe,” by Isaac of York and the masculine Rebecca, was a moral spectacle; it was the _cancan_ made forever absurd and harmless. But otherwise, the burlesques were as little cheerful as profitable. The playwrights who had adapted them to the American stage--for they were all of English authorship--had been good enough to throw in some political allusions which were supposed to be effective with us, but which it was sad to see received with apathy. It was conceivable from a certain air with which the actors delivered these, that they were in the habit of stirring London audiences greatly with like strokes of satire; but except where Rebecca offered a bottle of Medford rum to Cedric the Saxon, who appeared in the figure of ex-President Johnson, they had no effect upon us. We were cold, very cold, to suggestions of Mr. Reverdy Johnson's now historical speech-making and dining; General Butler's spoons moved us just a little; at the name of Grant we roared and stamped, of course, though in a perfectly mechanical fashion, and without thought of any meaning offered us; those lovely women might have coupled the hero's name with whatever insult they chose, and still his name would have made us cheer them. We seemed not to care for points that were intended to flatter us nationally. I am not aware that anybody signified consciousness when the burlesque supported our side of the Alabama controversy, or acknowledged the self-devotion with which a threat that England should be made to pay was delivered by these English performers. With an equal impassiveness we greeted allusions to Erie shares and to the late Mr. Fiske.